AUSTIN — Ann Richards, who shed the role of homemaker to rise through Texas politics to become the state's 45th governor and a national celebrity, died today after a six-month battle with cancer. She was 73.

Richards was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in March.

Richards was the quintessential Texas woman, with a sassy homespun charm, sharp wit and tough pioneer spirit. With bright silver hair, a weathered face and an affinity for cobalt blue suits and pearls, Richards was instantly recognizable to national television audiences.

As a Democratic politician, Richards' 1990 race for governor against Republican cowboy oilman Clayton Williams became a battle of the sexes. Her victory symbolically broke down gender barriers for a generation of Texas women who were seeking professional careers.

Richards labeled her administration the "New Texas," appointing more Hispanics, blacks and women to state boards and commissions than any previous governor. She pushed for increases in public education funding and promoted business expansion in the state.

Polls showed Richards was the most personally popular governor in 30 years. But a liberal image kept her job approval rating beneath 50 percent, and she lost her 1994 re-election bid to Republican George W. Bush, the future president.

Late in her term as governor, the Houston Chronicle asked Richards how she viewed her gubernatorial legacy.

"How about, 'She changed the economic future of Texas,'" Richards replied. "And that really beats what I feared my tombstone was going to say, and that was: 'She kept a really clean house.'"

Richards was born Dorothy Ann Willis in the front bedroom of a white frame house in what is now Lacy-Lakeview, a Waco suburb. Her father, Cecil Willis, was a pharmaceutical salesman. Her mother, Ona, was a homemaker.

Richards married her high school sweetheart, David Richards, while still at Baylor. They had four children: Cecile, Clark, Ellen and Dan. As David Richards praticed law in Dallas, Ann Richards was a full-time mother and homemaker and a part-time political volunteer.

"I was mostly involved with my babies. We did everything by Dr. Spock; if you did not have a Dr. Spock book, you could not raise a child," Richards said in her autobiography, Straight from the Heart.

The Richards family moved to Austin in 1969. Three years later, Ann Richards took her first big step toward becoming a politician, agreeing to help run a legislative campaign for Sarah Weddington.

Weddington was the 25-year-old lawyer who had won the Roe v. Wade case in the Supreme Court legalizing abortion. Weddington wanted to win a seat in the Texas House to push for laws giving women equal rights with men, such as giving a woman a right to credit in her own name and not her husband's.

Weddington won, and in her second term she hired Richards as her legislative director.

The political transformation began in 1975, when a group of Austin activists approached David Richards and asked him to run for county commissioner. When he declined, she decided to run for the seat, defeating an incumbent.

But while Richards' political career was blossoming as a Travis County commissioner, her personal life was deteriorating. Her marriage was failing as they grew apart, and she began drinking heavily in Austin's political bars after work every day.

On Sept. 27, 1980, her family and friends cornered her in the living room of a friend's house and told her she was an alcoholic who needed treatment. Richards received treatment at the St. Mary's Chemical Dependency Center in Minnesota.

Afterward, she became a lifetime advocate for people suffering from alcohol and susbstance abuse problems. She helped pass laws requiring insurance companies to pay for treatment and she convinced legislators to fund expanded substance abuse programs for state prison inmates.

While the alcoholism treatment saved Richards, she said in her autobiography, the change of lifestyle that went along with being sober finished her marriage. She and David Richards split in December 1980 and ultimately divorced in 1984.

She plunged into statewide politics in 1982 after discovering that state Treasurer Warren G. Harding was under investigation by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle for possible misuse of office.

Friends convinced Richards to challenge Harding in the Democratic primary, and she ended up in a runoff with him. But Harding was indicted on charges that he used state employees to send out political mail. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and dropped out of the race, effectively giving Richards her first statewide victory.

As state treasurer, Richards was a little-noticed public official. She managed state investments and the sale of bonds and cash management notes. She was best known on the "rubber chicken" circuit, making humorous speechs to civic organizations, women's groups and Democratic clubs.

Her profile changed dramatically in 1988 when Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk asked her to be the keynote speaker at the party's national convention that summer. Her speech was to draw differences between the parties and take aim at a fellow Texan: Vice President George Bush, the GOP nominee for president.

Richards thrilled her national audience with some of her feminist humor on the ability of women to equal men: "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."

What became memorable, though, was a line she delivered to show Bush was out of touch with the economic and family issues that were important to poor and middle class Americans.

"Poor George, he can't help it — he was born with a silver foot in his mouth," Richards said.

"If you just go nasty, go ugly, that isn't an effective way to do business," Bush said.

That speech set the stage for Richards to run for governor in 1990. She defeated former Gov. Mark White in the primary and then Attorney General Jim Mattox in the runoff.

The runoff became nasty as Mattox accused Richards of illegally using cocaine and seeing treatment for a cocaine addiction. Richards declined to answer any questions about possible past drug use.

The general election race against Williams became a classic Texas political battle. She was the image of the modern Texas woman, while Williams projected the cowboy aura of the state's heritage.

Williams was a cowboy who had become a millionaire oilman and had expanded his empire into telecommunications and banking.

Richards played off his mistakes. Williams once compared bad weather to rape, saying there is nothing to be done about it, so "relax and enjoy it." He also refused to shake Richards' hand after she had criticized some of his business practices.

The state's male vote gave Williams the edge, but women voted overwhelmingly for Richards.

Richards became the first woman to win the Texas governor's office in her own right. Miriam "Ma" Ferguson had won the office in 1924 as a surrogate for her husband, former Gov. James Ferguson.

During her first year in office, Richards signed a $2.7 billion tax bill to balance the state's budget. The state also adopted the lottery under her.

Her most notable achievement was opening the doors of government to people other than Anglos and men. About 44 percent of her appointees were female; 20 percent Hispanic; and 14 percent black. Her two predecessors in office had given more than 77 percent of their appointments to Anglo men.

The biggest problem that faced Richards was overhauling the state's public school finance system under orders from the Texas Supreme Court.

Voters soundly defeated a proposed constitutional amendment she supported to redistribute wealth from rich school districts to poor ones. Opponents labeled it a "Robin Hood" system.

Richards then urged the Legislature to come up with just about any school finance plan that would save Texas — and her — the embarrassment of forced school closures. Lawmakers responded with a plan that gave wealthier districts five options for sharing their property wealth. That plan also became known as "Robin Hood."

During her tenure, Richards' popularity continued to expand to a national audience. She was featured in Vogue, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Ladies Home Journal and The New York Times Magazine. Superstar photographer Annie Leibovitz took a portrait of her for Vanity Fair. Richards traded one-liners with late-night talk show hosts Jay Leno and David Letterman.

Richards' personal charm probably played best in the area of economic development. She once described herself as a "two-headed cow," a curiosity that corporate leaders allow through the door just so they can see her.

She could brag about getting General Motors to keep its Arlington plant open, as the company was partly motivated by a package of state incentives. She persuaded Southwestern Bell to move its corporate headquarters from St. Louis to San Antonio. She convinced computer giant Apple to consolidate its customer service operations in Williamson County.

Richards went into her 1994 re-election campaign against the younger Bush with the highest personal popularity ratings of any governor in 30 years, but her job approval ratings rarely topped 45 percent in public opinion polls.

"The polls show the people of Texas want to see Ann Richards on Leno, not in the Governor's Mansion," one of her campaign insiders lamented at the time.

Richards' frustration erupted at one point when she questioned Bush's experience to serve as Texas governor and his criticism of her record. She called him "some jerk who's running for public office."

Bush studiously avoided engaging Richards in a personality contest. Focused on issues and aided by a national tide toward Republicans, Bush defeated Richards.

After leaving office, Richards became a client recruiter and lobbyist from the firms of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand of Washington, D.C., and then later Public Strategies of Austin. She also was a frequent guest on CNN talk shows, particularly Larry King Live.

In her farewell news conference as governor, Richards said she was ready to move to the next phase of her life. The homemaker-turned-politician wanted to earn the money that would make her secure in retirement.

"Life is like a layer cake," Richards said. "You put one layer on top of the other, and whether you frost it or not is up to you. I'm looking forward now to a little frosting."

In addition to politics, Richards loved her family, Lady Longhorns basketball, and attending the movies. Every week, she would brief reporters on the latest movie she had seen.

Evan Smith, the editor of Texas Monthly magazine, had become close friends with Richards through her love of the movies. Smith is the co-founder of the Texas Film Hall of Fame, and Richards emceed four of the five ceremonies sponsored by that group.

``As a personality, if you think about the nature of politics today, they don't make them like Ann Richards,'' Smith said. ``Ann Richards was one of the truly funniest people God ever put on this earth.''

``Ann was obligated, chemically and biologically, to say what was on her mind, even if the truth was uncomfortable. Ann's honesty and candor is one of the great things about her that will be missed,'' Smith said.

``God bless her, there were times when Ann Richards was a divider, not a uniter,'' Smith said. ``And God bless her for that.''